Women attend a May 5 demonstration in Lagos, Nigeria, calling on the government to rescue kidnapped schoolgirls.

I'm not alone of course. Most of the media can share the blame for not informing our readers, listeners, Twitter followers and Facebook friends about the shocking story out of Africa that was so unthinkable it was hard for so-called civilized people to get their heads around it.

Because, have no doubt, there was nothing civilized about this wholesale kidnapping of hundreds of girls in a lawless region of Nigeria that went unnoticed and underreported for weeks before recently reaching a critical mass of outrage for anybody who learned the details.

Hundreds of schoolgirls kidnapped by gunpoint by a group of terrorists known as Boko Haram — it literally means "Western education is sinful" — in a planned raid that has its roots in religious friction, deeply divided tribal history and, most of all, a kind of brutal thuggery on a grand scale.

The girls have been missing since April 15. There have been mass demonstrations in Nigeria and around the world pleading for their release. In America, social networks took notice and an Internet campaign made #BringBackOurGirls a trending topic.

It takes more than social networks to apply real pressure on terrorists, but the spotlight on the despicable tactics of Boko Haram did serve to isolate them on a world stage and spark the U.S. government into action as President Barack Obama pledged to assist Nigeria in any way possible to ensure the release of the girls.

Of course, Boko Haram reportedly just killed another 300 people recently, so it's not certain if the usual political tactics will work on these cretins.

The blame for not reporting enough about the missing girls, estimated to be as many as 276, lies in the lack of journalistic interest in reporting stories out of Africa, a confusing place with historic significance for African-Americans and others with roots to the continent that is rarely given the same attention in world news reports as places such as Europe or Asia.

The fact Africa is a continent with hundreds of countries and regions unknown to most American journalists probably accounts for the lack of substantial reporting about African governments and in some cases monarchies ruled by modern-day despots.

Clearly, what's going on with the missing Nigerian girls makes little sense to most writers and reporters who cover politics, crime or other local news in America.

The Nigerian government seemed strangely disconnected from the public furor over the missing schoolgirls; one report had the president's wife — I could print her name but who would be familiar with her? — even suggested the girls had been rescued or that some of the story was a hoax.

Some pundits have wondered why Nigerian officials had to be prodded to respond to concerns from the West and speculated that part of it was an embarrassment about their inability to address the problem.

There's a $300,000 reward offered by the Nigerian government for information leading to the girls' rescue. The United Nations also weighed in with a stern warning to the kidnappers that they would not be able to escape punishment for their brazen actions.

The terrorists responded with threats that they were considering marrying off some of the captive girls to their membership.

So far, there have been no horror stories about the girls being abused or raped, but with all eyes on the case, it's a tense time for those still trying to get a handle on how to resolve this.

I learned about the story through the websites that usually do better than U.S. media on international stories; BBC.com in particular, although American public radio and television has responded in the past few weeks with welcome coverage.

Again, it's Africa, an enormous land with all kinds of different people speaking different languages and living in societies with traditions and experiences that are not translatable.

That's probably why so many Americans like me shied away from the story; how could we possibly know anything about a country where hundreds of schoolgirls get taken by dangerous groups and nobody seems to have a clue how to make things right?

One thing's for sure; this tragedy won't get solved by ignoring it any longer, no matter how difficult it is to report.